The invention relates to a protective face visor comprised of a filament mesh, such as a mesh of wires, like metal wires, or of plastic filaments. Its preferable application is in preventing shavings produced during power-sawing from flying into the oprator's face.
Various protective means are used during forestry work in order to prevent injury. These include various types of protective face visors which are used to prevent shavings that are produced during power-sawing from flying into the operator's face, particularly in the region of his eyes. Such visors are generally hinged to the operator's helmet.
Unbroken transparent plastic visors have been tried for this purpose. Such a visor allows good visibility while preventing any solid particles from passing through. However, an unbroken visor has proven not to be a particularly good solution since resin from the shavings adheres to the visor, refraction errors may occur since a film of water easily develops in rainy weather, and the air circulation inside the visor is unsatisfactory, which causes condensation to form on the inner surface and thus considerably deteriorates the operator's vision. The poor ventilation also causes the operator's face to be insufficiently cooled. In view of these and other deficiencies, plastic visors of this type have not enjoyed great success.
A visor produced from a fine mesh or net of filaments, such as metal wire or plstic material filaments, overcomes the drawbacks mentioned above to a great extent. Such a visor is light in weight and provides good ventilation and cooling, thus eliminating any disturbing condensation. However, a traditional mesh visor has one great drawback, namely its relatively low capacity for allowing light to pass through, since the mesh must be sufficiently fine as to not allow through too many shavings particles. Despite other favorable features, there has been a certain unwillingness to utilize such visors, mainly due to the deteriorated vision of the operator. Studies that have been undertaken indicate that less than half the forest laborers who have access to such visors wear them when using a power saw.